Scene City
By JACOB BERNSTEIN OCT. 15, 2014
Brad Pitt flew in from Malta on Tuesday and was expected at a V.I.P. screening of his new World War II movie, “Fury,” which opens Friday.
Around 5:30 p.m., guests rolled into Kingside, a restaurant on West 57th Street, for an event billed as “cocktails and hors d’oeuvres with Brad Pitt.”
Blaine Trump stood by the front bar, telling a reporter how much she likes Mr. Pitt. “I fell in love with him during ‘Thelma & Louise’ and I’ve tried to see every movie since,” she said.
Nearby was Susan Lucci. Same thing. Although she tried to make a point about how hard it was to be good looking and be taken seriously. “He’s so handsome people sometimes forget what a great actor he is,” she said.
But the minutes kept ticking by and no Mr. Pitt.
As waiters handed out crab croquettes, Jess Cagle, the editor of People magazine, talked about the recent weddings of Mr. Pitt and his buddy George Clooney, which were both featured in exclusive coverage in his magazine. Mr. Cagle seemed to imply that Mr. Clooney provided more bang for the buck. “He gave us 50 photos,” he said. “It was amazing.”
Mr. Pitt’s co-stars Shia LaBeouf and Logan Lerman walked in. It was arguably Mr. LaBeouf’s most public appearance in New York since he disrupted a “Cabaret” performance in June and was sentenced to three months of substance-abuse treatment.
Now he was back, in his gray suit (“It’s from Italy,” he said, unsure of the brand), sober and munching on sliders, as part of his Oscar season redemption tour. He was clearly nervous as he sat in the back with the film’s director, David Ayer, talking tenuously about how Mr. Pitt had been there for him when things got tough during the grueling shoot.
“I ain’t never worked with a man in his position who gives as much,” Mr. LaBeouf said. “I got really vulnerable early on, and he carried me.”
At 7 p.m., there was still no sign of Mr. Pitt, but women with clipboards nudged guests next door to the Directors Guild theater for the screening.
As the crowd, which also included Spike Lee, Ivanka Trump and Anna Wintour, took their seats, Mr. Ayer moved to the front of the room and thanked his producers, John Lesher and Bill Block, before adding, “There’s also some guys that star in this thing and I’d like to bring them out.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Brad Pitt,” he said proudly.
Mr. Pitt came out from a side entrance, wearing a dark jacket, untucked shirt, tinted glasses, faded jeans and dark brown boots. For a minute, he stood there, saying nothing, as the photographers went snap, snap, snap and audience members craned their necks to see if he was everything they had dreamed.
As the lights went down, Mr. Pitt and the cast left the theater, jumped into a pile of SUVs and headed uptown to the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 for another screening, another star-struck crowd and more photographers going snap, snap, snap.
